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I still glance at it every now and then. But it seems like after SG and early Dofus/Eve/Travian Days everyone over time scattered across to many games since after SG nothing really hooked the majority of the group.

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Basically what wingnut said, however some of us are available on other games to this day. We just don't have the large presence we used to. A lot of us are still out there just hiding. Your mission as a newbie is to come out to all game systems and PC and find us. I will make mine easy PSN Kalmenus

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I'm still around, mostly playing Hearthstone and Overwatch these days. Most of us are pretty scattered at this point, though.

The basic history is, there were a couple of regs in SG (IC and CH if my memory can be trusted) led by Jeslek and Acheron who decided to band together and take off their pants and that became EHJ and was the dominant US/NA timezone group in the game. We branched off into other stuff because SG was slowly dying, built up some pretty big divisions in a few games, then stuff happened, RL got in the way, and people went their separate ways. The end.

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Yep... real life sucks the life out of gaming groups. EHJ used to be known as a fearsome entity in whichever game we mass moved into. I lurk every week or so, but that's all I really have with streaming and such.

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I'm still around, mostly playing Hearthstone and Overwatch these days. Most of us are pretty scattered at this point, though.

The basic history is, there were a couple of regs in SG (IC and CH if my memory can be trusted) led by Jeslek and Acheron who decided to band together and take off their pants and that became EHJ and was the dominant US/NA timezone group in the game. We branched off into other stuff because SG was slowly dying, built up some pretty big divisions in a few games, then stuff happened, RL got in the way, and people went their separate ways. The end.

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Haven't done much actual gaming lately, nothing I can play feels like it's worth the time investment. However, I've been working on my own game for about two months now, it might be of interest to some of you (huge shameless plug follows).

If I had to use known games to describe the concept, I'd say it's a cross between Football Manager, Alpha Centauri, Shattered Galaxy and EVE. Progress is slow but steady and I think I should have a working singleplayer demo by summer's end. Teaser trailer :

As you can see, the graphical side of things is far from spectacular but as with some of the games that inspired it, it's not the selling point of the game. It's obviously a convenient way to bypass entirely all the drawing and animations which seem like a poor time investment, but it also allows the player's imagination to do most of the work which is great considering where the action is set.

As with Football Manager, another key aspect of the game is that you, as a player, don't actually get to do much by yourself as almost all units and heroes are AI-controlled. Your choices come into play when you set the parameters of the units and heroes under your control, the AI takes care of the rest. Sorry to disappoint those who were expecting to arb some poor souls.

As with Alpha Centauri, the storyline is set in outer space in dire circumstances. Earth being on the verge of becoming uninhabitable, its denizens focused their efforts on an ambitious project to launch humans in capsules towards planets that could sustain human life. The game starts on this very first planet, where society can be built anew.

And as with Shattered Galaxy, the fighting is done by way of heroes who each command a certain amount of units. Since killing each other will certainly bring humanity to extinction, humans would rather sacrifice lesser units rather than fight among themselves. Units gain XP, heroes gain XP, heroes design the way their units are equipped and yada yada.

Eventually, the player gets to command other AI-controlled heroes, compensating the lack of actual "click and act" gameplay with a much bigger sense of scale. Politics will also play a much more important part than it did in SG - as in EVE, I'm hoping the world feels like a sandbox where players have incentives to improvise and try to bend the rules. Players might unite under the banner of a faction but how power is shared and applied within that faction should be left entirely to the players.

If anyone is curious, so far everything is done through C#.

Long live EHJ, df you have 420 posts you're basically done here.

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Haven't been here in years but Peaches mentioned the thread, and then I saw all the names who replied to you just within June and my heart broke a little again. Anyway. What about you? What brought you to register on ic.com in 2013?

At our peak, we had a dozen active divisions, a little over 500 active members in our gaming divisions and nearly 2000 individual members in the online community. Our people have held countless parties around the world IRL, struck up friendships, caused a few marriages and businesses. It was a good time.

I think we officially folded our SG division around 2010. The old leadership group had moved on around that time as well and soon afterwards a website crash cost us the forums with (nearly? more than?) 1M posts.

Everyone points to age and real life as the reason the community moved on. They were certainly factors. Had we been 21 year olds forever, gaming 40 hours a week, the events that undid the organisation wouldn't have had the effect they did. Nonetheless, there was a catalyst, and it was Rollin siding with Mainmast in a private conversation on the Division Leader forum. It triggered a chain of events that basically ruptured the community and created gaps that would've required considerable effort to bridge -- an unreasonable amount of effort for adults with full-time careers. So, RL was definitely a factor, but if we're gonna bother stating some history, it might as well attribute responsibility accurately.

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Thanks for all the replies - I see there is still some life on these boards!!

@Tender Peaches - Looks like a hi-tech take on dwarf fortress . I do like minimalist UIs like that, good times.

@Obsidian - Good chronological overview there. I think I found this site by searching for shattered galaxy and stumbled upon a semi-official (most likely) forum, which is now locked, but they mentioned SG2 and they may have mentioned this site too. It's been awhile so I forget the details. Peaches' Point of Contention thread I think shows up on google as well.

I help run a similar outfit for an old game called Infantry Online; we ended up writing our own servers since Sony was P2P and nobody felt like paying. Been running since 2003 but the population has been steadily decreasing as people get older. Nonetheless, the "veterans" of the game stay and play regularly. I suppose on some level I can relate to the nostalgia and the want to keep the community around.

Any word on Shattered Galaxy 2 making any dents in the western world? I got the client but it seems fairly sparse.

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Not sure what you're referring to with Shattered Galaxy 2. The original Shattered Galaxy is still running, albeit on empty servers. Point of Contention was our SG remake as a SC2 mod. The project above by Peaches is a new solo effort to create a brand new game from scratch that's only inspired by SG. And as far as I know no company has any plans for any SG2.

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I guess it doesn't really matter at this point but what was the whole discussion and Rollin have to do with EHJ imploding? It was always my assumption that we just all, for lack of a better phrase, grew up and our priorities changed. Like you said Cres, when you don't have the time to dedicate to gaming on a grind intensive game like SG you tend to lose touch. I do miss it at times and have a small semblance of this group with like 5 regulars on XBox Live but mostly I keep in touch with the EHJ that I can. I mean, without /buttsecks life is not worth living. Daim Laio

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Everyone points to age and real life as the reason the community moved on. They were certainly factors. Had we been 21 year olds forever, gaming 40 hours a week, the events that undid the organisation wouldn't have had the effect they did. Nonetheless, there was a catalyst, and it was Rollin siding with Mainmast in a private conversation on the Division Leader forum. It triggered a chain of events that basically ruptured the community and created gaps that would've required considerable effort to bridge -- an unreasonable amount of effort for adults with full-time careers. So, RL was definitely a factor, but if we're gonna bother stating some history, it might as well attribute responsibility accurately.

I honestly only vaguely remember this and only after reading your post. I wouldn't mind a refresher from you or Rice especially as I never considered myself a part of the catalyst. You mentioned 2010 but I'm guessing you mean towards the end of our stay in SG, 2007. That would've put me as a senior in high school. Point being I have no clue what you're talking about and I'd like to understand. It's upsetting I can't remember such an apparently damaging event.

Thinking back to those days... so long ago. In ten short years I've obtained a wife, step daughter, house, career, degree... and any second we'll get a call that our birth mother is in labor for our hopeful adopted baby girl.

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Heck, I don't particularly remember that being the deal breaker either.

I do know that IC.com had kind of split off into separate groups that were no longer managed by a central 'vision', and instead tended to just do their own thing with whoever their local leader type was. The further it got down that path, the less the central organization worked. I started just focusing on the EVE group and not worrying about the rest. I think IC.com got handed off to Rice during this period.

Later when I was out of work for overly long during the recession I didn't want anything distracting me from just chasing employment, and set the EVE group aside. That would have been back in 2010 or so. EVE group staggered onwards for a bit, but largely broke and died thereafter, and we just went ahead and shut the alliance down.

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You don't remember that being the deal-breaker because you had, as you said, already started ignoring the meta-organisation, focusing exclusively on EVE. It had been a few years that I hadn't had the gaming hours to hold anything together through sheer presence, so conversely 100% of my attention was on the meta-organisation, which I wanted set up for long-term survival. Certainly didn't have all the answers, but certain concepts seemed key and obvious:

- Loyalty requires value provided by the organisation to its members

- A healthy cross-section of well-supported divisions in a variety of games, where somewhat similar values are embraced, was the easiest way to provide value

- Division leaders who work together to uphold those values creates long-term sustainability

- Consistent recruitment practices provide stability to the values of each division

- A modern website with features that support these principles greatly alleviate the necessary workload

And so it's with this kind of long-term strategic backdrop that we consider Retal/MM's work on IC.com in the months leading up to the events in question. The new website featured customizable recruitment forms that would necessarily be adapted to the needs of each division but also featured a universal boiler plate section of questions to ensure all new recruits are introduced to the same expectations. It featured shared resources used indiscriminately by members of all divisions. It would feature gamification to increase the presence of EHJ members on the site. It was attractive and effective, and it would be a source of pride to EHJ members at the time.

When the things happened, I'd say the site was maybe 80% complete. I browsed it. It wasn't totally finished, but the key new sections were done and it all looked very good.

I believe the guy's name was black_necris. If it wasn't that, it was something similar. He was an EVE player, but had taken to posting in the open forums too. I forget what the exact topic of the thread was about. Something about a bank. He either robbed a bank? Or defrauded a bank, more likely. And he just kind of loudly advertised that in a thread, it was somehow on topic. I guess he felt like we'd think it was okay because 1. fuck banks/the man! and 2. it was like a Mexican bank, not a real bank. So I guess he thought we'd think it was cool or something. Obviously his comment led to a bunch of awkward tumbleweed posts and the general vibe was wow, this guy is a douche.

But MM, who had full admin rights on the site due to his work with the new version of the website, decided his comments warranted a much stronger response, so he took it upon himself to ban the douche. Kicked out of EVE-EHJ, banned from the forums, the full deal. The guy doesn't expect it / is not very bright, and basically just asks in-game (EVE) what's up with his forum access. This is how Acheron looks at the logs and sees what happens. He heads to the top private forum, visible to less than a dozen people, basically only the division leaders and the webmaster, and asks: what the fuck?

MM explains, the guy is a douche, he needs to go. Have you seen his posts? what a douche. Acheron is very mad. Obviously don't remember the full content of his replies but it's basically of the, it's not your job to decide who to kick out, leave my division alone variety. I remember making an attempt to put things in perspective by asking MM if he can figure out what the risks might be if someone outside EVE arbitrarily kicks someone inside EVE. Who is the player? Who are his friends? What might the ramification be for removing someone from a division without firsthand knowledge of the impact?

At the same time as these weak attempts at de-escalation are made, Rollin jumps into the thread and sides 100% with MM. Rollin had categorically refused to consider any question of "impact to the greater EHJ" when running the Travian division and had clashed privately with me on a number of occasions. By this point Rollin has been in "Fuck the man!!" mode for a solid year+ and this is just the next chapter of the full-fledged narrative in his mind. With Rollin flaming Acheron and I over our tyrannical attempts to impose federal control upon states rights, MM gets more indignant than ever and shit goes nowhere good fast.

MM quits, takes the 80% completed update with him. Rollin would never coordinate with anyone outside Travian ever again. Dofus, previously the most isolated division, now finds it ideological divide with the rest of the organisation totally validated. Acheron would never again concern himself with the events outside EVE, and winds up signing up for their own voice chat server. EHJ WoW blinks and asks where its friends went.

I'm not saying that we didn't get old and stopped gaming. I'm saying it didn't have to matter -- it didn't have to end this way. There are plenty of new gamers coming up and plenty of them would've made great EHJ members. But they needed to be recruited by clear-minded leadership who understood and agreed with the long-term vision. And in turn, those leaders needed to have tools to recruit and retain these members, such as the ability to leverage a huge gaming community that will welcome you with consistent values across dozens of games and a killer website that keeps our vision and principles alive.

Nothing ever only happens for a single reason. But that moment... that was the linchpin. No doubt about it.

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Eh I still don't remember it. I remember working on a flash based member "house" with another guy and telling you we couldn't get it done. That's pretty much the extent of my memory. Current me would've still called the guy out as a douche but if you want him in a game I never even played more power to you.

My memory sucks but I'd side with Acheron with what little I remember. The core was SG. Sure it split into other games near the end, but the core was never cohesive among them. When SG died it left EHJ with the few divisions it had and with no organizational leadership. When they died (Acheron looking for work, Rolling giving you the middle finger, etc.) so did EHJ. I'd hope a website improvement wouldn't have that impact and Rollin deciding me banning a bank robber was the cart to jump on was just the first opportunity he decided to take.